


It Is Known for Certain

by annecoulmanross



Category: Bleak House (TV 2005), Bleak House - Charles Dickens, The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: 19th Century Legal Hand but Make it Sexy, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bleak House AU, Crossover, Drug Use, Fix-It, Handwriting, Hurt/Comfort, I Swear This IS a Fix-It Fic, Law-writer is Dickens-speak for Legal Scribe, Letters, M/M, Opium, Period Typical Attitudes, Reference to Trans Pregnancy, Suicidal Thoughts, Tattoos, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25059994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annecoulmanross/pseuds/annecoulmanross
Summary: Almost fourteen years have passed since John Bridgens was separated from the love of his life, Henry. At first, John made an adequate living rising through the ranks of the Royal Navy, but since then, John’s fortunes have fallen into ruin. Barely keeping himself alive on the meagre wages of a law-writer and constantly longing for his lost love, John believes he has very little left to live for. In despair, he turns to opium.A crossover between AMC’sThe Terror(2018) and BBC’sBleak House(2005), based on the Charles Dickens serial narrative of the same name and the fact that John Lynch is terminally lovely in both shows as John Bridgens and Mr. Nemo / James Hawdon, respectively.You really don’t need to know anything aboutBleak Houseto read this – I certainly didn’t, to write it!
Relationships: John Bridgens/Harry Peglar
Comments: 10
Kudos: 23





	It Is Known for Certain

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to @[kaserl](https://kaserl.tumblr.com/) and @[mothicalcreatures](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laelreenia/pseuds/mothicalcreatures) for reading this over!!
> 
> The working title for this fic was the “anti-Dickens Bridglar spite-fic,” so, you know, if _Bleak House_ is your favorite novel ever, this may not be the fic for you? I haven’t read _Bleak House,_ I just watched the 2005 BBC miniseries and got WAY too attached to John Lynch’s Mr. Nemo. I also don’t like Charles Dickens. Basically, if this makes Dickens roll in his grave, then I’ll consider it a success. 
> 
> More detailed (aka, not spoiler-free) content warnings in the end-note, if you want to double-check before reading!

Smoky darkness spooled out into the center of John’s vision. Shadows had already claimed the edges of his sight. A peaceful gloom, softening the corners of his dreary, dirty rooms, pressed John onward toward sleep – it was the only way John could forget what he’d lost. A wisp of opium-smoke reminded John of the danger of falling asleep like this – he might not wake up, he knew. But what did it matter? 

Looking up at the attic-room ceiling, John’s eyes swam, seeing words etched across the beams. John knew this was only in his mind, a fancy of the drug and John’s own weariness. The handwritten curves and whorls that made up his daily trade, all those legalistic flourishes that the lawyers demanded and John dutifully penned, decorating page after useless page of wills and trusts and documents for rich men who had property to their name and loved ones worth preserving their property for. 

With a heavy sigh, John curled in on himself, laying his head on his arm. He closed his eyes against the image of his own handwriting, which had been burned onto his eyelids. John’s heart ached. He would give anything to see a different lettering right now – Henry’s beautiful, imperfect scrawl, with its loops and mixed-up letters. But John had been forced to burn all the notes that Henry had written him, to keep Henry’s secret safe. And even then, it hadn’t been enough; Henry had still been taken away from him, the one thing that bound John to life. 

Without him, without him… 

John pressed his eyes firmly shut, feeling a bit dizzy and sick. He was hungry, and the opium-smoke was a poor substitute for food. He grasped a blanket to his stomach and imagined it was Henry’s journal, that he’d kept for so many years before it had been lost along with all of John’s other possessions, sold to some pawn-shop to pay for rent and food and forgetting – or better yet, John could pretend the bundled cloth was Henry himself, the sweet warmth of him so lithe and lovely against John’s ribs. 

Maybe this would be the night. Maybe John would drift off and find himself awaiting Henry in some kinder place than this. John closed his eyes.

Somewhere very far in the distance, John heard a voice calling to him. 

John tried to open his eyes, but it was like wading through chest-deep water: every muscle resisted him. 

The voice that called out to him, speaking his name, seemed soft and terribly familiar. At last, John found the strength to force his heavy eyes to open. The face that floated above him, pale in the gloom, was one he’d never thought to see again. 

“Henry?” John asked, wonderingly, almost refusing to believe the evidence of his eyes. Another trick of the opium, perhaps? 

But, miracle of miracles, Henry it was. His features became clearer as he leaned toward John, looking older and more weary – no longer the young man John remembered. There were some lines now, just beginning to trace around Henry’s green eyes, and Henry’s hair had been cut fashionably short, unlike John’s own long mane. But it was Henry all the same. 

“Henry,” John said again, and reached up a hand toward that beloved face. Henry caught John’s hand between both of his own, and then brought John’s hand to his lips.

“John,” Henry whispered, with a worried smile. 

“How–” John began, but whatever he meant to say next was interrupted by a hacking cough. 

Henry reached for him with frantic hands, and John yielded to his care, closing his eyes against his will as his own throat betrayed him and the smoke caught in his lungs. He could feel Henry’s fingers against his chest as the pain pulled him back under, and then all was darkness once again. 

&

The next time John awoke, he found that he lay on clean, white sheets, in a darkened room lit by a single candle. Henry sat beside him, stroking John’s forearm, where John’s shirtsleeves hid the tattoos he’d gained during his years at sea. No one much cared what a law-writer looked like, but the tattoos – the eye, the ship, the anchor, the gull – would have raised questions that John hadn’t wanted to answer. 

“Where are we?” John asked. The rooms they were in now weren’t grand, but they were a vast improvement upon the squalor in which John had lived these last years. 

Henry smiled gently. “I found us some rooms, for now. Just somewhere to stay while you heal up, where no one seemed too curious.” 

“How did you pay–” John began, and then realized that he might not want to know the answer. 

But Henry had understood all too well, for the sweet smile dropped from his face. “I– I took some money with me, when I left,” he admitted, voice low and hurt. 

John knew he had stumbled upon some wound that Henry still bore, and rushed to cover his mistake, “How did you find me?” 

Henry reached behind him, and pulled out a familiar leather-bound volume. John reached for it in wonder, but Henry held it up, teasingly, out of John’s reach. John had always marveled at how rapidly Henry’s humor could return. Opening the wallet-cover, Henry rested his finger on the paper and traced a line beneath the words, as John had taught him to do when John had played at being Henry’s tutor. 

“‘Captain J. Hawdon,’” Henry read aloud, confident and practiced. 

John blushed. 

Henry continued, “Found this in a pawn shop, with a stranger’s name written inside the cover, and I thought, ‘Who would mark my old papers except Mr. John Bridgens, their owner and keeper?’ And, after all, this handwriting looked ever so familiar. So I asked around, and found that an unnamed man had sold all of Captain Hawdon’s things, but no one could tell me aught of Captain Hawdon.”

“I needed a new name,” John confessed. “I’d found a way to join up as a steward, at first, but a kind midshipman helped me forge some papers – had me entered in the rolls as a mate. So ‘James Hawdon’ was my name for many years.”

“And what a good name it is,” Henry said. “I’ve always liked ‘James.’ I’d think to steal it, were I ever unhappy with ‘Henry.’”

“‘Henry Hawdon,’ then?” John proposed, the corners of his lips twitching, irrepressibly, up. 

But Henry shook his head. “I’ll find a surname someday, I’m sure. And no– before you ask, it’ll not be ‘Henry Bridgens.’” 

This was an old argument, routine as winding a pocket-watch. Henry had always said he couldn’t bear pretending John was his brother. _I’d rather be a stranger, since I can’t be a wife,_ Henry’d said once, long ago. _And I won’t be a brother._ And John had always kissed him and said, _husband, husband, you’ll be my husband…_

John made another desperate grab for Henry’s old journal, but this time his lungs protested, sending him into an uncontrollable fit of coughs. Henry pressed a firm hand to John’s back, and passed him a glass of water, waiting until John had taken a few careful sips before allowing John to push the glass away. Henry took the glass back and set it down and kissed John’s shoulder. 

“Now lie _down,_ Mr. Bridgens,” Henry ordered, sounding just like he had when he was younger, ordering John around playfully, as though John wouldn’t do absolutely anything young Henry asked. As though John wouldn’t do absolutely anything for Henry even now. 

John obediently lay back down on the cool, clean sheets, and looked up at Henry, who began distractedly rifling through the pages of the wallet-journal. “I can’t believe that you rose to captain and I never knew,” Henry said. His words sounded almost wistful, as though imagining John standing proud at a ship’s wheel. 

“It was only of a very small ship,” John confessed. “And only for a very short time, just while we were sailing a prize back to England.”

Henry smiled down at John. “‘Once a captain, always a captain,’” he quoted faithfully and John felt his cheeks bloom with embarrassed heat. 

“Well,” John said. He muffled a cough in his own fist. 

“They also told me that you were going by the name ‘Mr. Nemo,’” Henry said softly, as he dampened a cloth and mopped it gently over John’s brow. 

John nodded, though it sent a spike of pain through his skull. 

“‘Outis’… ‘Nemo’… ‘Nobody’ – it seemed apt.” John said. The mythology felt a little grandiose to him, now, and the joke a little bleak. 

His efforts nevertheless earned the reward of Henry’s bright laughter, soft but no less wonderful to John’s ears. “That name didn’t disguise Odysseus as well as he’d hoped, did it?” Henry said with mirth in his voice. “I think it’s _very_ apt, after all – since I _did_ find you.” 

John almost laughed, himself. “That you did,” he said warmly in return. 

A memory of summer sunlight glowed behind John’s eyes: lying stretched out beneath an oak tree in the Barbary family’s fields, with Henry using his stomach as a pillow as John read aloud in loping Greek verse, pausing every now and then to try an English translation, or even a Latin one, much to Henry’s amusement. But then someone – Henry’s sister, perhaps – had called out “Honoria!” and Henry had flinched. John had rushed him into the little shed at the bottom of the garden, where Henry could struggle back into skirts and pull down his then-long hair from the cap he’d been wearing. 

John blinked. 

Though Henry’s hair was short now – carefully styled – and he carried himself with an easy confidence in his neat shirtsleeves and trousers – nicer than any that John had been able to pilfer for him, before – Henry still looked so much like his old self, in many ways. The same eyes, as green as the sea, the same playful set to his chin. But the world had worn Henry into something strong and firm, like marble polished to a high sheen, gleaming after bleak weather had washed off all the sculptor’s dust. 

John felt almost intimidated for a moment by this new Henry, and his cold, stern face. What could John offer a man like Henry: strong and capable – severe even? He wasn’t the boy John had met, who’d needed John like an anchor, needed John to be someone who could see Henry for who he was. John would have been content to stay with Henry forever, only Henry had told him it would be too dangerous for them both. The image of Henry weeping silent tears, as he told John to leave, had haunted John’s sleepless nights ever since. There had been such coldness in Henry’s face then too, frozen like an explorer’s, lost to the Arctic ice.

But Henry’s grin broke out once more, now, and Henry’s joy was enough. If he could bring Henry some measure of happiness, any at all, John thought, it would all be worth it. For as long as Henry would allow him to stay. 

&

It was almost a week into John’s recovery when he realized that he and Henry weren’t alone. 

John knew for certain that Henry was out of the house – Henry himself had said so, told John that he’d be down at the market getting food and another book to read to John, since they’d finished already _Jane Eyre._ The sunlight had begun to slant toward late afternoon – Henry had been gone for some hours. And yet John could hear footsteps, far too close by to merely be neighbors walking around on the landing outside their rooms. 

“Hello?” John called, softly, readying himself to rise from the bed if necessary. If Henry had been found out, John would need to warn him, after all. It wouldn’t do any good to stay in bed, healing, if they took Henry away from him again. 

“Hello,” a soft voice said, and then a small face peered around the doorjamb. For a moment, John’s heart raced in confusion, for the curve of the curious brow seemed very like Henry’s when he had been so much younger. But then the stranger straightened, and John saw that it was a girl, much younger than Henry had been when John had met him. Her hair, like Henry’s, was cut short, but not so short that the ends couldn’t frame her face and cover her cheeks when she ducked her head, shy. 

“Hello,” John said again, flummoxed. 

“Hello,” the girl said. 

“I’m John,” John added. 

“I’m Esther, sir,” the girl said. 

“Hello, Esther,” John said, straightening up until he was sitting fully upright and smothering the groan that started somewhere in his ribs. 

The girl seemed a bit hesitant to speak. John began once more, with what he hoped was a gentle, encouraging tone. “Do you know Henry?” he asked. 

“Mr. Henry said you were sick, so I shouldn’t bother you.” 

John wracked his brain for some reason Henry would have brought a young girl into their rooms and came up with nothing. “How–” John asked. “How do you know Mr. Henry, Esther?” 

“Mr. Henry found me at the boarding school, where they brought me after my aunt died,” Esther said. 

“I’m so very sorry to hear about your aunt.” 

Esther’s face was studiously blank. “Thank you, sir,” she said, though there was little heart in it. 

Thinking back to the lack of love in Henry’s household growing up, John imagined that losing her aunt may not have been such a tragedy for Esther. 

“Have you been with Mr. Henry long, then?” John asked. 

Esther shook her head. “Not so long, sir. Ms. Barbary – my aunt – passed on just this year.” 

John held back a wave of shock at the familiar name, Ms. Barbary, that of Henry’s older sister. _Could it be…?_ Trying to do the math in his head, John puzzled at the years that had passed. Almost fourteen years – could this child be thirteen years old? John knew that he and Henry hadn’t been as careful as they ought. It was possible. It was just possible. 

The child did look ever so much like Henry. Those same sea-green eyes. 

“How did Mr. Henry know to come get you – at the boarding house?” John asked, carefully. 

Esther chewed on her lip. “He’d gotten a letter, he said. Because he’d known my aunt.” She looked like she wished to say more, but no further words were forthcoming. 

John had so very many questions, but they were questions for Henry, not for this young girl before him, whose shy sweetness was quickly endearing her to John. 

“What have you been doing while I’ve been sick, hm?” John asked. 

“Reading, mainly, sir,” Esther said, a quiet smile on her face. “Mr. Henry won’t let me help with the chores so very much, and he wouldn’t let me see you.” 

“Would you be willing to read to me?” John asked, “– only if you want to, of course,” he added, realizing that hearing Henry’s voice nearly all of his waking hours had spoiled him, made him used to hearing stories, hearing another’s voice, not feeling alone any more. 

But Esther was already half out of the room. She returned quickly with a little cloth-bound book and a grin, and then she settled into the armchair by the window and began reading. 

John marveled. When reciting from the page, Esther’s voice was crisp and clear and confident, her words smooth, as Henry’s had never been when reading aloud. John allowed himself to become immersed in Esther’s recitation, and let his many questions float from his mind. 

&

Esther was part-way through a poem from her school-book when the door to their rooms opened once more, and Henry slipped in, quiet as a mouse. John, who was facing the door, saw Henry arrive, but Esther, sitting opposite and reading aloud to him, remained unaware. Henry froze when he saw Esther sitting with John, but then a warm grin crossed his face, and he set down his basket ever so gently, so as not to disturb Esther’s reading. Henry then crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, seeming to soak in the scene. John thought Henry looked filled with light – as happy as John had ever seen him.

They both listened as Esther read on, spooling out a verse of English history: “England’s triumphant Queen, prepared to wield alike the sword, the sceptre, or the shield, in council or in war alike renowned, alike with glory and affection crowned, reigned in her people’s hearts…”

At this moment Henry shifted his feet ever so slightly, and the floorboard creaked beneath him. 

Esther spun around, wide-eyed. 

“Mr. Henry!” Esther said.

“Hello,” Henry said warmly. His eyes darted to meet John’s. “Don’t let me interrupt you reading so beautifully to Mr. Bridgens.” 

Esther looked up quizzically at John, who realized that he hadn’t given her his last name. But he smiled encouragingly, so Esther read on, until their rooms were wrapped in a friendly darkness, and the young girl’s eyes at last began to drift closed despite her valiant efforts. 

&

Later that night, after Esther was asleep, Henry sat down at the desk beside the bed. He pulled out some papers, covered in that dear, imperfect hand, with its loops and long letters that John so loved. John could make out the last paragraph or so, which read, in part –

_…I will encumber you no more. May you, in your just resentment, be able to forget this unworthy one, on whom you have wasted a most generous devotion – who avoids you naught from any fault of your own but from a deeper shame which cannot be explained – and who thus writes this…_

John frowned, and placed a hand on Henry’s shoulder. 

“What’s this?” John asked, gently. 

“It’s for my–” Henry looked down at the page. “For the man I married.”

John felt his heart shatter. He said nothing, only rubbed his thumb over the seam of Henry’s shoulder-sleeve, back and forth as though the smooth motion could fix everything, give them fourteen years back. 

After a while, Henry went on. “After – after I had Esther.” Henry grimaced. “They’d told me she’d died, John. I’d already lost you, and my parents were desperate to have me married off. I resisted for as long as I could, but I felt like it was all over anyway – what should it matter what happened to me? So I let it happen.” 

“It’s alright,” John said, turning Henry to face him. “You did what you had to do. You needn’t be ashamed of a thing, love.”

Henry buried his face in John’s shoulder, falling onto the bed beside him. John gathered Henry up in his arms, rubbing his hands – a bit possessively – across Henry’s back. Henry murmured something inaudible against John’s chest. 

“What was that, love?” John asked, bending down to press his brow to Henry’s head. 

“Every day, I wished I’d run away with you.” Henry said, barely louder than a whisper at first. “I thought I’d have a part of you – our child, John, I loved her before she was born, I never stopped loving her – but then she was gone, and I was alone.”

“I’m so sorry, Henry,” John said, holding Henry as close as he dared.

“He wasn’t a monster,” Henry said. “Sir Leicester, that is. The man who– that’s the worst of it. If he’d been a villain of a husband, I’d have some reason to do what I’m doing, what I’ve done – stealing from him, leaving without a word. He’s been kind to me, these years. He doesn’t deserve this.”

“I wouldn’t want him to have been a monster,” John whispered, through the broken pieces of his heart that scratched at his throat. “You deserve kindness – nothing but kindness.” 

Henry bowed his head. “Sir Leicester never once understood me – he couldn’t. Not like you do, John. But I am bound to him, John. I owe him this.” Henry gestured at the paper covered in his scrawling letters. 

“Are you not, then, free to love me?” John asked. He wouldn’t dare press Henry to lie, or to break an oath, like John had been forced to do. “I will leave, if you wish it – like last time,” John offered. “I could not press you, Henry. I could not make a dishonest man of you.”

Henry remained silent a moment, his stormy eyes wide as he looked up at John. At last, he said, with firm clarity, “If you will take me, as a man who has never loved anyone but you, rather than as – as someone who was tied against his wishes to a man he did not love, to a man who did not ever truly know him – well, then,” Henry swallowed. “Then I am Henry, and I am free to love you.”

John blinked tears from his eyes. 

Henry continued, “Will you have me, John?”

“Yes, yes,” John said, nodding fervently as the tears spilled over. His long, dark hair fell over his eyes as he nodded, but Henry’s clever fingers pushed it back. When John looked up at last, Henry appeared concerned, but John smiled at him helplessly until Henry’s beautiful brows were no longer furrowed with worry. “You’re all I’ve ever wanted, love,” John said, voice thick. “Are you certain this is what you want? I can’t promise you comforts, can’t raise Esther up in the fashion she deserves. We’ll have to go somewhere far from London.” 

“Better she be with us, and learn to work for a living, than she grow up without ever knowing her fathers’ love,” Henry said firmly. “I want to work, too, John. I want all of us to be together. However we can.”

“But, Henry – are you absolutely certain?” John asked. 

“More certain than anything in this world, John,” Henry said. His dear face was so close, and John reached out a gentle finger to trace his love’s chin, almost without realizing. But Henry turned his face into John’s welcoming palm, until the beautiful sharp line of his jaw was cupped in John’s hand. 

John brought all of his earnestness into his voice. “You _are_ my world, Henry,” he said. “If you wish it, I will never leave you again.”

Henry grinned, leaning forward. 

When their lips met at last, it was like coming home. 

**Author's Note:**

>  **Detailed content warnings** : John Bridgens almost overdoses on opium. It’s described in vague terms because I know nothing about opium. (Heads-up if you plan on watching _Bleak House_ BBC for the sake of John Lynch: Mr. Nemo does in fact overdose on opium and die at the end of the first episode, which is like… why I am writing this story…) 
> 
> In this story, Henry is a trans man born into the same circumstances as Mr. Nemo’s lover in the novel, Lady Honoria Dedlock. Henry is deadnamed by an unnamed character in a flashback; otherwise, only the name ‘Henry’ is used, and Henry’s he/him pronouns are used consistently throughout. Unbeknownst to John, Henry has had John’s child; this infant was then taken away from Henry right after birth, and Henry was told the child was dead. As is typical with this pairing, there is an age gap, the details of which are below. 
> 
> In _Bleak House_ , Esther’s aunt / guardian Miss Barbary dies when Esther is “almost fourteen,” and Esther then goes to a boarding school. I’ve plucked her away at this age to be rescued by her father, so it’s been about fourteen years since Henry and John last saw each other, and Esther is still just thirteen. I’d say Henry was probably about nineteen or twenty when he got pregnant with Esther, making him about 33 or 34 years old when this story takes place. John Bridgens is about ten years older than Henry, so he was generally around thirty when he and Henry first got together, and is about 45 years old as of this story. 
> 
> **Source notes** : In the novel, James Hawdon is a captain in the army, not the navy. I’ve changed this because I felt like it. The poem Esther is reading is _A Poetical History of England_ (1810) by Louisa Capper, aka the aunt / adoptive mother of our boy James Fitzjames. Poetical History was apparently used as a teaching text for girls at boarding schools, which is where Esther probably picked up a copy; the section that she reads aloud to John Bridgens is about Queen Elizabeth I. You can read the whole poem – [all 129 pages of it](https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=pdtlAAAAcAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PR3) – here. The text of the letter that Henry is writing to Sir Leicester Dedlock comes from Dickens’s _Bleak House,_ but is heavily modified. 
> 
> The story’s title, “It Is Known for Certain,” comes from Dickens, who wrote in [_Bleak House,_](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1023/1023-h/1023-h.htm) “It is known for certain that the handsome Lady Dedlock lies in the mausoleum in the park, where the trees arch darkly overhead, and the owl is heard at night making the woods ring; but whence she was brought home to be laid among the echoes of that solitary place, or how she died, is all mystery.” Because killing an interesting character for the shock-value is good story-telling! Especially when it’s a character that you’ve been shaming for having sex out of wedlock! Basically, this fic arose from the frustration that two of my favorite characters in _Bleak House_ both die for very petty, prudish, sad reasons, so I just decided to take that bit of canon and toss it away. And then rewrite the story from the ground up. And Dickens walked himself right into it by writing that taunting phrase, “It is known for certain.” Dickens walked into my knife. He walked into my knife 23 times.


End file.
